Australia is known to have some of the best scuba diving in the world. Although the Great Barrier Reef is the crowned highlight of the country, there are hundreds of lesser-known diving destinations worth exploring.
Key Largo, Florida is known as the scuba diving capital of the world. This is because there is a very large amount of dive sites easily accessible to divers. The Florida Keys is located along the 3rd largest barrier reef in the world.
After all, according to certifying agencies like PADI, SSI or other scuba diving organizations, there is only one scuba diving age restriction. You can begin to dive when you are 8 years old, and there is no maximum age.
If you had but 30 seconds to teach someone to scuba dive, what would you tell them? The same thing Mike did — the Golden Rule of scuba diving. Breathe normally; never hold your breath. The rest, in most cases, is pretty much secondary.
Statistical analyses show that the vast majority of accidents occur in water depths of about 3 ¼ feet or less. One study reports only 13% of accidents occurred in depths of 3 ¼ -9 feet. Since injury often occurs with head impact on the pool bottom, depth matters because water acts as a brake that slows diver velocity.
Evidence from experimental deep dives and longitudinal studies suggests long-term adverse effects of diving on the lungs in commercial deep divers, such as the development of small airways disease and accelerated loss of lung function.
Costs for this course will vary depending on where you complete it throughout the world. In Australia, on average it will cost around $600 which usually includes, all of your equipment hire, pool training sessions, 4 open water dives, and all certification and training fees.
This study indicates that divers have larger lungs (FVC) than predicted when they start their diving career and FVC may increase slightly due to adaptation to diving.
Gas is more compressed the deeper you go, so it takes more air to inflate the lungs. If divers don't take their time allowing their lungs and the air to slowly return to normal levels of compression, the gas expands resulting in too much air in the lungs. This can cause tears in the lungs.
Never hold your breath while ascending. Your ascent should be slow and your breathing should be normal. Never panic under water. If you become confused or afraid during a dive, stop, try to relax, and think through the problem.
Lung volume is as an important factor for apneic diving performance, and diver's lung volume is larger than in matched controls. Some of this effect is likely due to predisposition, but elite divers often use stretching and “lung packing” in their training to improve lung capacity.
Freediving like any other physical activity will increase the strength of your body, help develop muscles and increase endurance and vitality. Freediving activities also benefit your joints, which experience less pressure under water, and help strengthen your lungs through exercises to increase their oxygen capacity.
This makes free diving an ideal way to interact with some incredible animals. I have been lucky enough to freedive with 8 different species of sharks in Bimini, including great hammerheads, bull, and tiger sharks.
DECOMPRESSION SICKNESS
Breathing air under pressure causes excess inert gas (usually nitrogen) to dissolve in and saturate body tissues. The amount of gas dissolved is proportional to—and increases with—the total depth and time a diver is below the surface.
Because of the high potential for injury, the World High Diving Federation recommends that no one dive from 20 meters (65.5 feet) or higher unless there are professional rescue scuba divers stationed in the water [source: World High Diving Federation].
The most frequent known root cause for diving fatalities is running out of, or low on, breathing gas, but the reasons for this are not specified, probably due to lack of data. Other factors cited include buoyancy control, entanglement or entrapment, rough water, equipment misuse or problems and emergency ascent.
It's perfectly alright to cough into your regulator until your airway is clear. If you feel that telltale tickle in the back of your throat, try to move into an open area where you won't bump into anything. Also, be aware of your buoyancy when coughing while scuba diving, as you may unknowingly hold your breath.
Red is the first to be absorbed, followed by orange & yellow. The colors disappear underwater in the same order as they appear in the color spectrum. Even water at 5ft depth will have a noticeable loss of red. For this reason, strobes are usually used to add color back to subjects.
How deep do you go? The industry standard depth limit for recreational divers is 130 feet (39 m) at sea level. During the basic scuba certification, students experience depths of 30-60 feet (9-18 m), and a “deep” dive is considered more than 60 feet (18 m). “Going deep” is not an end in itself for scuba enthusiasts.